Post-Apocalyptia: Short Stories From The Wasteland
by Hairball Audiobooks
Summary: "Post-Apocalyptia: Short Stories From The Wasteland" is a dramatized audiobook series of short stories based on the Fallout franchise. This is these are the original story versions converted from the narration scripts. The audiobook productions can be found on SoundCloud by searching Hairball Audiobooks.
1. Season 1, Episode 1 - The Job

Post-Apocalyptia: Short Stories From The Wasteland  
based on the popular game franchise "Fallout"

Season 1, Episode 1 - "The Job"  
December 10th, Year 2281

Freeside, Nevada

"So where you from, pal?"

The bartender's voice and accent were rough around the edges, but still layered with familiarity. He was a smelly man, gruff and bearded, probably in his mid thirties or forties. No matter how much effort he put into cleaning the glass in his hands, it still had a hazy film around the inside; but that was more likely because of the way the light from the eastern window flared through it, or the dirty apron tied around his midsection, recontaminating everything he cleaned.

"Not from around here," Jason responded without looking up from the counter where his whiskey was. He took a sip, sparingly, mindful that he should conserve his drink. _Play the part, blend in, watch your alcohol. Keep those eyes to yourself._

"That's obvious," the fat bartender said. "You got a look'n ya like you'd just come from up North or such. By my count, that's no place to be."

"Something like that," Jason said. He was getting frustrated. The man tending this dusty establishment was quickly becoming a problem with the attention he was bringing. Six months of work could be made into a **real** big waste of time if the bartender blew his cover.

" _Compensate_ ," his mind said. " _Taper in the adjustments and make do. There is no such thing as failure._ "

Jason certainly looked the part, though. A long grey trench coat with a matching cowboy hat was a common sight in the Mojave region of Nevada, he'd certainly done his homework. Still, he was unfamiliar with the particular regions around New Vegas, and the awkward and barren streets of Freeside hadn't helped that. Jason was used to bigger crowds, more concentrated crowds of diversity. Easier to blend in, easier to work.

Easier to disappear after the work was done, too.

"Shit," he thought out loud. Since the word wasn't supposed to come out of his mouth, he followed it up to establish a personality with the bartender. It looked like the target was behind schedule anyhow, so he figured it a good time to practice some people skills. "This is some good whiskey, boss."

"Hah," the man replied. "That ain't even the good stuff. I can show ya some real drank, some of that knock-yo-cock-in-the-dust kinda sauce."

 _Time to shift. Make the moves, seem innocent and young. Inexperienced._

"Thanks, but I couldn't handle anything stronger. Hell, this here is potent enough."

 _Check the bartender's eyes. Is he looking down? Up? Or to the right? Dammit. Focus, Jason. Nope, he bought it. No suspicion._

"Ah, so you're a real lightweight huh? Figured as much. Keep'n me well stocked behind the counter so it's no problem. Most my patrons clear out my stock by day's end. Not that's a bad thing, I make plenty'a caps anyhow..."

 _Good. Bartender's talking again. That's fine. Keep him interested in himself, and not me._

Jason was beginning to feel in his right element again, then the door to the nearly deserted bar opened, and some cool air floated into the dusty place. His brain went back to work, using peripheral vision to try for an identification.

A few seconds was all it really took. The person entering wore a duster similar to him, except his hat was more full, and pulled down, concealed the face and eyes.

Dammit.

Jason did a quick review of his identification parameters in his brain. Male, late twenties, two scars on the face, one next to the right eye and one a few inches below it, round and chambered for nine millimeter rounds. Before he could recall the worry he'd had about taking a job where the target had already survived a very thorough assassination attempt, he snapped back into focus.

"Sunset," the target said to the bartender as he approached the bar. He paid no mind to Jason, outside of a quick glance, which Jason caught from the corner of his eye. He felt himself tense up a little when the target set a package on the counter, and the bartender handed him a Sunset Sarsaparilla in return.

"Thanks, Bill."

The confirmation came. The target tilted his head back to drink the soda, and the light was like a friend to Jason, pointing at the long and mean scars on the man's face. Just next to the right eye, and another just below it. The bartender spoke to the man, breaking Jason's concentration.

"Take it easy, buddy. See ya next week?"

"You know it. See ya, Bill."

He does his business and leaves quick. If you aren't paying attention, you might miss him. Jason remembered these words, written on the dossier of his target, describing him as much as possible. He didn't necessarily need that info anymore though; he knew he'd found his mark. The scars were definite confirmation, more than anything.

The target turned and walked out, collecting a small bag of caps as he left. A split second after he was out the door, Jason dropped seven caps on the counter and spun off his stool, making for the door.

"Hey there pal, you forgot your change."

Jason ignored the bartender and pushed open the door, checking both the left and right seemingly simultaneously as he stepped into the cool night of Freeside. He spotted the target, fifteen yards to his seven o' clock, crossing the street.

 _Trail a good distance. Wait for the box, and then close it. Make sure no one sees or hears it, and make sure you leave the logo. Always leave the logo. It's how we get more business, and how you get more work._

The target moved into the dark of a corner near a building, but he was still in the open. Jason was determined to do this clean, to do it right. His trench coat was long enough to conceal his weapon, but the mind kept telling him something was wrong. Just... **wrong**. Somehow.

 _Instinct can also be the reason you fail, and failing is just as bad as being the target yourself. Don't become the target, Jason. Dead employees don't make money. Not for the company, and certainly not for themselves._

Jason took the corner in silence, peeking around it enough to make sure his target didn't know he was a target. By the time your prey knows they are prey, you should be killing them.

Further now. Twenty yards. _Did the man know he was being followed?_ The dossier said he was more experienced than Jason's previous targets. Still, three years of training to do one job made Jason pretty damn good at killing people. That thought brought his confidence back in droves.

Jason moved. He quickened his step, taking note of the target's path. The moon was behind them both. The man stopped, making Jason step to his left into the cover of a skeleton building, out of sight. He pulled a mirror from his pocket and made use of his training.

The target was still stopped, facing now to the right, studying a piece of paper. Jason's heart leapt when the man stepped into the darkness of an adjacent alley, still focused on the paper.

Mirror back in the pocket, Jason moved quickly. He came to the corner leading into the alley, and with practiced fluidity, stepped into the darkness and pulled his 10mm weapon.

Immediately after his eyes told him that the target was not in front of him, not in the path of a bullet, they then told him that he'd made a mistake. A gloved hand gripped the barrel of his weapon and jerked it to the right. Jason's instincts flared and he swung out with his available hand, but made contact with something much harder and denser than the bones in his delicate right fingers. Before he could react any further, the weapon in his left hand was violently twisted around and wrenched free, snapping his trigger finger and breaking the bone.

Whoever it was, they knew what they were doing. The figure was shrouded in darkness, but each movement was professional and deliberate. They stepped back, Jason saw a glint from his pistol, then felt gravity pull him down as the figure used the now confiscated firearm to put a 10mm round through each of Jason's knees. The gun made the all too familiar popping sound he'd become accustomed to while killing his targets, the slide clicking back and then forward again, against the black muzzle suppressor.

 _It should hurt, right? It's supposed to hurt. Why doesn't it hurt?_

Jason fell onto his back and drew a long breath. He almost wanted to laugh. Many of his friends had gone out this way. Counter killed by someone just way more experienced than you. The man put a boot on Jason's chest, and leveled the weapon at his face.

"How many are with you? I'm not going to ask twice."

"Just me."

"Who do you work for?"

"Some people who don't like you."

The target shifted his gun hand and fired. Jason felt his right hand explode at the wrist, but he didn't bother to look. He knew it was gone, but this time it hurt like hell.

"Triage!" He almost shouted. The pain brought out desperation that he thought he'd conquered long ago in training. He was weak and scared, yes; but no matter how bad the end would be, he would not beg for life.

"Who is Triage?"

"Kill squad. New Reno. Don't ask who paid, I don't know."

When the 10mm round erased Jason's left hand this time, all that was left was his still broken and mangled trigger finger.

"Fuck!" It was the last time Jason would ever say the word. It was sad, too. He liked that word. "They don't tell us details," he was shaking now. Blood loss? Fear?

The target turned away for a second, mumbling something. "Makes sense," he said to Jason. "The pros are like that. Sorry you got mixed up in this, kid."

"I knew the risk."

"If it helps, I've been where you are. You probably know that already about me, though."

"Yeah. My company does their homework. Top billing in New Reno."

"You don't know why?"

"No. If I did, I would tell you."

Jason knew that it was over. He was okay with that, though. It had to happen to everyone. Better here and now instead of ripped apart by some wasteland terror.

"Killed by a mailman," Jason sighed. "How embarrassing."

"Yeah."

The target leveled the gun and fired into Jason's forehead, neither of them bothering to look.


	2. Season 1, Episode 2 - The Unity

Post-Apocalyptia: Short Stories From The Wasteland  
based on the popular game franchise "Fallout"

Season 1, Episode 2 - "The Unity"

August 2nd, Year 2163

Mariposa, California

The smoke from the explosives and now destroyed electronic equipment on the exterior of the small facility mixed with the already fierce dust storm, completely obscuring Kenny's vision; even through the T-51b's hardened helmet optics. He wasn't stupid enough to keep his head exposed and watch the wind clear away the haze, even though he knew that last volley had probably finished off the two remaining and rather persistent Mark IV Laser Turrets. The complex was obviously built with the defender in mind, but whoever had set up the exterior security systems hadn't taken into account that potential interlopers had perfect cover right on the opposite side of the sandbags, guard shacks and concrete barriers lining the perimeter. This had given Kenny and his team a distinct opening that they quickly exploited.

"Sanders, I want eyes out there. Are we clear?"

"Infrared and thermal are clean. I'd say so."

"Alright, let's try this again."

Four armored and hulking individuals stood up from behind their respective positions, becoming visible to one another. As he rose, Kenny gripped the concrete slab that had been chiseled away by what had seemed like hundreds of 5mm rounds, pushing himself to his feet. In his T-51b Powered Armor, he stood nearly 7 feet tall and looked like a walking tank, same as the other three members of Lima Two. There had been five of them, but Ingles had bought the farm when his attempt to bypass the lockdown failed, resulting in the deployment of the Mark IVs. None of the team had seen it happen, either; when the turrets dropped and the red lights started popping, you kept your head down unless you wanted to end up being a pile of ash swept into an empty cigarette box. Unfortunately for Ingles, that had been exactly how his book got written. Three sets of EMP explosives and 25 microfusion cells later, and the Mark IVs had finally been dealt with.

Despite the fact that all four of Lima Two knew Ingles was either a smoking pile of ashes or a pile of lasered bloody limbs, they kept their military discipline the primary focus. They stood up as one with precision, like a four headed serpent, watching all directions with lethality. Each one of them carried their own personal variety of death. While Kenny himself was a marksman and lover of the .308 rifles, Sanders was a gear head and preferred the toys that light up. Ingles had been heavy weapons, and they would be missing that support for sure; but Volney could make up for it with his 12.7mm. Nelson, the fourth member, had once been unlucky enough to have Volney cover him with the submachine gun, and said he couldn't hear out of his left ear for a week afterwards. The weapon didn't bark at you like an MP5 or snap and pop like a carbine. It damn near roared.

"We're all clear," Sanders replied through the team's frequency. "Ingles?"

"Nothing left by now," Volney's voice on the frequency. "He got ashed, and the wind took him."

"Let's stack it up, girls." Kenny made his gestures and his men reacted immediately.

The facility was square, Pre-War in origin, and obviously much more than it appeared to be. They moved cohesively, armed and ready to hand out violence in any given direction.

"Okay, Nelson, get on bypassing that lock. I want to be inside this place an hour ago."

Nelson was the oldest of the group. At 36 years old and nearly a hundred documented combat operations, he was the go to guy when nobody else knew what to do. That he would have to bypass the security in Ingles' place was a bit frustrating, not to mention slightly unnerving for Lima Two, and Kenny could feel it. It would take him the better part of an hour to figure it out, considering that Nelson wasn't exactly a professional at cracking Pre-War technology.

"This could take awhile, Kenny. I don't recognize the operating system, and I'm not even sure it's in English. There may be a way, but I wouldn't-"

All four of them brought their weapons up and took a healthy step back when the lockpad suddenly turned from red to green, and the doors slid open immediately. Like clockwork, Sanders lit a flare and rolled it past the door and into the darkness.

"I did not do that," Nelson said quickly.

They took the facility like a well oiled machine, working fluidly to cover each and every corner. It became apparent after the first thirty seconds of miscellaneous hallways and rooms that the building was not at all your average Pre-War dump. Sanders had pointed out during a particular room clearing that some of the broken glass appeared to have come from chemistry equipment. The walls and floors were made of metal, unlike the outside of the building's concrete walls and mounts for defense systems.

"I don't like this," Volney had spoken up. There was little to no debris outside of the broken glass Sanders had noticed. "There was not a shred of radioactivity outside this place, but we're swimming in 2.6 doses right now. No movement, no energy sources, but we're getting radiation."

"Rads bother you regardless," Kenny replied. "Keep your eyes peeled."

They had come to an elevator at the end of a hallway, posted up, and waited for a few minutes as Nelson inspected it to see if it would be viable. Kenny quickly decided that he was going to miss having Ingles as the team's technical specialist. Ingles had always just got the job done or reported its failure, not almost constantly chit chat about how he couldn't get it figured out.

"There's no power to this place, Kenny. No power, no elevator."

"So we find the power source, or an auxiliary."

"It's not that simple. That source is most likely where this elevator is supposed to go, or along the way."

"So we blast the elevator and rappel the shaft."

"In powered armor? That's fucked."

"If the building doesn't have power then how did it activate the security outside?"

Sanders had cut off their conversation, and after a moment of silence and exchanged glances, Nelson shrugged (which was barely noticeable in his T-51b).

"I don't know. Volney, you got any ideas?"

Kenny sighed in frustration. This wasn't how his team normally operated. Ingles would've figured all this out as they were clearing the damned building, and they'd be either on their way down the elevator right now or blowing the shit out of it and finding another way further down. It was obvious, this facility went much deeper than it looked. Don't focus on what could've happened, focus on what has to happen now. Focus on the job.

Volney tightened the grip on his weapon and narrowed his eyes in concentration. "The building has auxiliary power for sure, and it isn't connected to the elevator. My guess is, we're going to have to shoot Sanders in the face."

Kenny's attention snapped to Volney in confusion. "What? What the fuck did you just say?"

But the three of them were all looking at each other, and then back at him. Volney's head tilted slightly as he replied, "I said we're going to have to find the auxiliary power source." Even though he couldn't see any of their faces, he knew they all had similar expressions.

"Let's hope something isn't wrong with your helmet," Nelson said to Kenny, approaching him and reaching up to inspect the delicate workings of the T-51b's headpiece. "Can't take it off and fix it in here. Radiation would kill you in minutes."

After a good thirty minutes of Nelson inspecting his helmet and checking it over multiple times and Volney and Sanders rechecking to make sure the building was clear, Volney was giving ideas for a possible location where the auxiliary power was. For the second time, they were startled when the elevator lit up seemingly on its own. It set all of them on edge even more, considering that nobody was touching it or working on the electronics. The blinking light above the sliding doors read "1" and soft lights illuminated the interior.

"I REALLY don't like this," Volney's voice came over the frequency. He was gripping his submachine gun almost too tightly, and when he reached out to test the elevator control pad, Kenny saw that his armored hand had left finger impressions on the weapon's foregrip. Despite his comment, they filed into the elevator one by one. "It's rated for five thousand pounds," Sanders had said while reading the dossier on the wall. "Should hold all of us."

They turned and faced the elevator's door, with Kenny at the front. Nelson punched a few buttons, and the doors began to slide closed. At the far end of the hallway, Kenny saw a man in ragged and torn clothes, standing in the middle of the far doorframe. His entire body was bloody and mangled, and in the last moment before the door closed, he turned his head like an owl, his eyes shot wide open, and he spit blood everywhere.

" **BYPASS THE SECURITY, INGLES!** "

So badly, more than anything, Kenny wanted to tap the team's frequency and ask if any of them had seen or heard what he just had… but somehow, he knew beyond knowing that they hadn't. Immediately, his brain began to try and justify what he had just seen. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. He wanted to deny it, but he couldn't keep doing it as the seconds ticked by. That was Ingles. He had just seen Ingles' face. Four years of steady combat operations and now he was beginning to crack? No, he was just sleep deprived.

His brain snapped back into focus as the elevator doors slid open, revealing another hallway, this one absolutely pitch black. With practiced fluidity, his team moved into the open hallway. It was long, and seemed to go on forever. Nelson lit a flare, and they approached a doorway; but the light from the flare bled out into something bigger, something more open and spacious.

"Oh my god…"

It was a massive room, but it looked more like the inside of a warehouse. Kenny knew they were at least a few hundred feet underground, but the industrial equipment hanging from every wall and section of the ceiling made it hard to determine the purpose of the place. A few large and long catwalks crisscrossed one another over what appeared to be massive vats of a green, thick liquid substance that dimly glowed with radioactivity.

"Kenny… what the hell are we looking at?"

But Kenny had no answer. He himself was asking that question. He'd forgotten all about what he'd seen just a few minutes ago, and was staring around in a cocktail mixture of both wonder and gentle fear. The logical part of his brain continued to alert him that something about this was wrong. Not only what he was seeing, but the place itself…

"Kenny, snap out of it!"

"Auxiliary power source," he said almost instinctively. "We still need to find it. This place has a mainframe somewhere, and I want to know what the hell all this equipment is for."

 _"THE UNITY."_

Kenny spun around to face whoever had just whispered in his ear. No, that's impossible. You're in a full suit of T-51b Powered Armor, it's not possible for someone to do that.

"Kenny?"

Now all three of them were staring at him intently. Nelson stepped forward to make sense of the situation, but Kenny could tell that his team was thoroughly interested in his newly developed behavior.

"Yeah boss, your helmet is malfunctioning again. Let me see-"

"No," Kenny waved him off. "There must be a radio echo in here, I thought I heard something behind me." As soon as the excuse came out, he knew his team would take it as complete bullshit. He was starting to feel that emotion again, the one he was sure he'd overcome years ago. The kind of fear that numbs you and grips your stomach with ice.

He was about to propose an idea for a search pattern when, faster than anyone could react, a robotic arm descended from the chains and hydraulics in the ceiling and seized Nelson by his armored head, lifting him up off the catwalk in his armor and spinning in a semi-circle. Volney had begun firing at the arm's appendages but the 12.7mm rounds had no effect outside of making it impossible for anyone to see anything over the muzzle flashes. Kenny found himself knocked clean off his feet as the mechanical arm swung past him, hitting him square in the chest with Nelson as it passed. He rolled over on the catwalk and came up on his hands and knees just in time to see Nelson struggling against the clamp on the arm, trying to free himself as it dangled him over one of the vats of green goo. If the arm dropped him, he would plummet right into whatever the hell was inside that vat, and his powered armor would make him sink like a ton of bricks. The T-51b was air tight, but there was no way to tell if he would survive.

Almost as if that had been its goal, the arm released Nelson and he dropped right into the vat, the green liquid splashing out from it and onto the upper catwalk near their feet. Kenny stood up as quickly as his armor would allow, and shouted at Sanders and Volney. "Scramble! We've got to get him out of there!"

But they didn't move, and neither did Kenny. He watched in his helmet's heads-up display as both Sanders and Volney disconnected from the team radio frequency, and a second later, Kenny himself did the same. None of them wanted to listen to Nelson scream. Whatever he was submerged in, whatever he was experiencing… they knew the best course of action was to turn off your radio so you didn't hear it.

It was a full thirty seconds before the green liquid stopped shifting and twitching from what they assumed was Nelson's body spasming, and they felt comfortable enough to turn their frequencies back on. Sanders was the first to say something.

"Kenny, I know this expedition is important but we're down two men."

Kenny wasn't responding. He was staring into the vat, his hands gripping the railing.

"Whatever the fuck this place is, it doesn't like us. We need to pack it in."

 _"He doesn't trust you…"_

"Kenny, I'm serious. I don't want to die down here. Let's bail!"

Kenny's hands left the railing and he picked up his weapon with determination. "No," he said forcefully. "We came here for a reason, and we're not leaving until we get it."

"Alright, look.. I don't want to be this guy right now but you're clearly not all here, man. You're acting real weird, and I just straight up don't want to end up like Ingles or Nelson. I'm getting the fuck out of here." Sanders started to walk past them both and back towards the elevator when the catwalk shook violently, causing them to almost lose their balance and fall backwards. There was a horrifying scream, and the three of them watched as the source of the sound identified itself.

He, or rather, it, rose up from the liquid in the vats, face first. The twisted and melted parts of his T-51b that were still remaining were now integrated with Nelson's dead eyes and wide open mouth, and the grotesquely mutated hands and arms (there were more than four of them) pulled it out of the vat and up over the catwalk. The body was now a random combination of limbs and appendages, but mostly a hideous biomass with pieces of Nelson's half armored screaming face in the center.

Volney, Sanders and Kenny opened up with weapons fire, backing up on the catwalk as Nelson pulled itself along towards them, shifting and jolting to force its own mass forward, forwards towards its food. The three armored men and their weapons cried their response in the form of 12.7mm lead and superheated light. Blood and goo and flesh and metal flew everywhere in a staccato of gore; but the Nelson abomination did not slow down. It reached out with one of the arms, and the face and eyes strained as the flesh shifted and the entire hand exploded at the wrist, producing a long piece of sharp bone that pulsed and sprayed more blood and fluids.

It happened very quickly. Volney was on point, but they had been backing up the entire time, away from the elevator and further across the catwalk as the monstrosity closed the distance. Just as he went to reload his weapon, the Nelson mass overtook him, and the flesh and appendages swarmed over him. Sanders and Kenny didn't stop firing even as the beast reached up with the bloody bone limb and plunged it down into the collar of Volney's T-51b, causing his body to jerk violently in a seizure and drop his weapon. The creature then lifted and turned his body sideways, the arms and legs twisted his armored figure in a vicegrip, and Volney's body was ripped to pieces just as Kenny pulled a DS-121 plasma grenade off his web gear and let it fly.

The bright green-purple flash nearly blinded him, but there was nothing alive about the Nelson horror anymore. There was so much blood and fluid on the catwalk at that point that Kenny was in a machine like state, shaking violently, his eyes darting from place to place. Sanders was breathing so heavily that he could see the shoulder plates of the armor moving up and down with his ingestion of oxygen.

"Kenny, let's go…"

Sanders was also shaking visibly. Kenny just continued to stare at the burnt and charred pieces of flesh and armor that had, just moments ago, been Nelson. He stared and stared for what felt like an eternity condensed into a few moments.

"Come on, Kenny, we have to get out of here."

 _"HE'S A COWARD._ "

"Kenny! What the hell, man! You saw that shit, now let's GO!"

 _"You don't need him, Kenny. He needs YOU._ "

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me…" Sanders threw his hands up in exasperation. This was not the time for his team leader to freeze up on him, especially not when they would be needing each other to escape from this nightmare. "Kenny, don't do this right now, man…"

 _"YOU are the one who survived. NOT him. YOU killed it. NOT him."_

"Kenny, if you don't snap out of it, then I'm gonna have to knock some sense into you. Ingles is dead, who knows what the fuck happened to Nelson, and you just saw Volney pump a whole mag of 12.7s into that thing, and now HE'S dead! Come on, man, what the fuck is wrong with you! I'm not leaving you here!"

 _"The Unity doesn't need him, Kenny… the Unity needs YOU. YOU have the gift. It's YOU, Kenny."_

"Look, all we have to do is get across the catwalk and back to the elevator. That DS-121 tore it up pretty bad but there should be another way across."

" _KILL HIM."_

Kenny reached down and picked up the 12.7mm submachine gun Volney had barely finished reloading before he was torn to bits, pulled back the charging handle, and emptied the magazine into Sanders' upper torso. Even with the heavy alloy plating, the armor piercing rounds punched holes in his T-51b, shredding him like paper. His body fell to the ground, becoming yet another part of the already messy gore around the catwalk.

 _"Follow my voice, Kenny._ "

Kenny walked. He walked down the catwalk and through more doors and hallways. As he was walking, he felt his hands reach up and disengage the helmet of his T-51b, and he breathed in deeply when he pulled it off over his head.

 _"This way, Kenny. Come to me. I will make you perfect. I will make you complete."_

The walls were wet. When had he pulled off his suit's gloves? Time became smeared in his mind, and he lost perception of it. How long had he been here? What was he doing? Why are the walls so damned wet and warm?

 _"Ignore the bleeding from your nose. Walk, Kenny. Walk to me."_

His feet were getting heavier. His arms, legs, his face… all of it was getting heavier. It wasn't until he looked down to see why that he noticed his armor was gone. Had he taken it off? No, he hadn't. He… he had… who… where was he? Who was he? … WHAT was he?

The walls were dripping with flesh. Human flesh, and blood. Kenny stared around in both awe and terror at the faces melded into the mass. The screams and wails of hundreds of dead people resounded in his head.

"Turn back! No, run away! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Get out, while you still can! No, Kenny! It's okay, Kenny! You can let go! **Come to us, Kenny. We are PERFECT. WE ARE ONE. WE ARE UNITY."**

The hallway opened and the flesh spread out across the ceiling. Kenny's eyes focused, and he saw the face of a man.

But it was no man he saw. The face was still there, but from the shoulders down, the body was integrated and mutated into a massive computer tower. The face stared down at him, and spoke without moving its lips. Kenny didn't hear the voice, he felt it, bouncing around inside his brain, gripping his entire being with absolute and unadulterated control.

 _"WONDERFUL, KENNY. YOU WILL PLAY A MOST IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE UNITY."_

Kenny opened his mouth to speak, but found that he didn't know how to. Tendrils of flesh and biological mass reached out from the computer tower and the walls themselves, wrapping him up, cocooning him. With every passing second, Kenny felt himself less and less human, until at one moment, he existed no more. His consciousness, his very thoughts were absorbed into the monster, and he took his place among the thousands of others that came before him. Kenny was not the first, and he most certainly would not be the last.

 _"Lima Two, this is Charlie Six, do you copy?"_

 _"Lima Two, this is Charlie Six, come back."_

 _"Lima Two, command has authorized a recovery team Lima Three. Stand by to receive reinforcements. Be advised."_


End file.
